


i’m not dumb (i'm just not smart either)

by orphan_account



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M, Post-Season/Series 02 AU, Tutoring
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-26 11:56:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21373762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Damn, Harrington, most of these are 8th grade level shit,” Billy marvels. “You reallyaredumb as a bag of rocks, aren’t you? It’s not just a front.”He leans back, balancing his chair on two legs to reach across the aisle and steal a red marker forgotten on the table behind theirs. He uncaps it with a flourish and starts making corrections. When Billy slides the sheet back to him five minutes later, it’s completely covered in red.“There you go, A ‘D’,” he grins, mean and sharp, pointing to where he’s written it in big bold letters at the top. “For ‘Dumb’.”Steve’s cheeks flush.---Tutor!AU but with a twist.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 7
Kudos: 107





	i’m not dumb (i'm just not smart either)

**Author's Note:**

> Y’all, this was all inspired by me reading Steve’s college essay from S02E01. Our boy is a freaking mess and I’m here for it. If you haven’t had the chance to check it out yet, please do yourself a favor and go read it. You can find a partial transcription [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/StrangerThings/comments/845yzx/spoiler_s02e01_steves_essay/)
> 
> Also, this is so fucking indulgent, guys. It’s like a trope galore in here.

It starts with an advert for Indiana Tech pinned to the noticeboard right next to Steve’s locker that reads ‘_Do something today that your future self will thank you for tomorrow._’ It pictures a group of five happy-looking teenagers posing on the college’s front steps, backpack thrown over one shoulder, books in hand. Right under it, written in a smaller print, are the words ‘_Talk to your school counselor today about _your_ options!’_

But, no.

Wait.

That’s not exactly how it starts, is it?

Maybe it starts two days earlier, sitting with Nancy in his car before school, watching her go over his college essay. She winces her way through every sentence but she tries to be nice about it. Tries not to hurt his feelings too much. It doesn’t matter though, because Steve knew it was shit before he even handed it to her, which _sucked_ because he’d spend all week working on that thing. But what do you write about when you can’t write ‘_I fought monsters from another dimension and it really helped me grow as a person_’? Turns out, you write a messy, rambling, disjointed two pages essay about basketball and your granddad’s time in the war.

Or maybe it starts barely a few minutes later when he tells Nancy _‘I’ll end up working for my dad anyway, is that such a bad thing?_’ and knows—just _knows_ as soon as the words are out of his mouth that they’re a lie. That yes – yes it would be _bad_. That working for his dad would mean a lifetime of being told he’s _not good enough, worthless, such a disappointment, Steve_.

Then again, maybe it starts this very afternoon, in the aftermath of Tina’s Halloween party, when he gets into a fight – _breaks up? –_ with Nancy, after they’ve both thrown around the word ‘bullshit’ so much that it had started to lose its meaning. When there’s nothing tying him up to Hawkins anymore.

Maybe –

But it doesn’t really matter when it starts.

What matters is that he somehow ends up here after basketball practice. In the guidance councillor’s office, sitting on a too small plastic chair that just won’t stop squeaking.

The silence in the room is heavy, uncomfortable. 

Steve shifts in his chair. _Squeak_. 

Eventually, Mrs. Peterson takes her glasses off, letting them hang on the chain around her neck and puts his transcript back down on her desk. She interlinks her fingers beneath her chin, elbows resting on the mahogany wood and looks at him – really _looks_ at him, studying Steve like she’s trying to peer directly inside his head. 

“Mr. Harrington,” Mrs. Peterson asks him, weighing her words carefully, “Is going to college something you genuinely wish to pursue?”

“Yeah, I think so.” _Squeak_. “I mean, sure, yeah,” Steve stammers out. Jesus, he couldn’t have sounded more unsure if he tried. _Shit_.

Her face remains blank and if she doubts his resolve, it doesn’t show. She nods. “I will be honest with you, Mr. Harrington. With your current grades, I’m not sure that this is an achievable goal for you.”

Steve’s heart sinks in his chest. Well, that’s just – _very_ honest. And Steve isn’t stupid, okay? He knows what his grades look like. It’s just that the prospect of going to college had always seemed so far away into the future that it had been easy to get distracted with friends and girls and parties. To tell himself that flunking this _one_ test or failing this _one_ essay wasn’t a big deal, that he could always focus on school ‘later’. Except ‘later’ had come and gone and now it seemed as if there had been _too_ much fucking around, _too_ many flunked tests and failed essays for this to be salvageable anymore. 

So yeah, coming here was a long shot, but that didn’t stop him from hoping for – _something_.

Fuck, at least now he knows he doesn’t have to stress about applications anymore.

Steve mumbles a hasty _thank you for your time_ to Mrs. Peterson and gets up, head bowed, cheeks fiery-red. He’s already half-way across the room, one arm stretched toward the doorknob, when she calls out to him.

“I wasn’t finished, Mr. Harrington. Sit back down, if you please.”

And Steve does as he’s told. He turns around and sits back down. _Squeak _goes the chair_._

Mrs. Peterson nods at him before carrying on, “There’s a service, we, at Hawking High, offer to those of our students who –” A pause. “– _struggle_ the most. It’s a tutoring program, overseen by our teaching community but entirely student-run.”

Steve’s hand spasms around the knee of his jeans. “Is that—you think that it would be enough? To get me into college?”

“I can’t make any guarantees. You see, you would need to improve your grades quite significantly during the next two months. It would be a lot of work but if you are indeed serious about this, I believe that it would be your best option.”

“Yeah. Okay. I could try.”

“You’d have to do more than _try_, Mr. Harrington. Those are valuable school resources that would be thrown your way. If I hear that you are not making significant efforts, then the sessions stop immediately. No second chance. Do you understand?”

“I get it, Mrs. Peterson. I won’t fu—I won’t mess it up.”

Mrs. Peterson smiles. “Good. I’ll arrange a meeting with one of our tutors right away. How does next Tuesday sounds to you?”

***

Then Monday happens.

He gets the shit kicked out of him by Billy Hargrove.

The Mind Flayer is successfully expelled from Will Byers’ body.

Eleven closes the gate for good.

All in all, it’s a pretty eventful night.

When Steve finally manages to get home, after dropping all of the little dweebs off, it’s already past 3 a.m.

He takes a long shower, downs two prescription painkillers he finds in the back of the medicine cabinet from the time he got his wisdom teeth taken out two years ago and drags himself to bed.

He’s asleep before his head even hits the pillow.

***

School the next day is excruciating.

The whole morning passes in a daze as Steve shuffles, zombie-like, from one class to the next. There’s a dull, throbbing pain spreading from his temples to the root of his nose and he regrets not taking a few more pills before leaving his house earlier. It’s distracting and he can’t seem to focus on anything, doesn’t even know if the teacher is speaking about History or Chemistry or some other subject altogether. It doesn’t help that he can barely see the board either, his left eye having completely swollen shut during the night with the right one not fairing much better.

To top it all off, the rumor mill had started as soon as Steve had stepped foot inside the building and it hadn’t stopped since. Even now, in class, people keep whispering amongst themselves, pointing not-so-discreetly at his face. It seems like Billy has yet to lay claim to his handiwork because from what he’s heard, the most common guess amongst Hawkins High is that Jonathan Byers – who drove in this morning with a new girlfriend on his arm – went back for seconds.

It’s a pretty shitty morning.

So when the bell finally rings announcing the end of third period, the last thing Steve wants to do is spend his lunchbreak going over Maths with some nerd who probably hates his guts. What Steve really wants right now is to go back to his car, recline his seat all the way back and take a well-deserved nap.

But he made a promise to Mrs. Peterson and he can’t fuck up on the very first day.

***

Sitting in one of the library’s study rooms, Steve is starting to regret not choosing to take that nap, because this tutor of his still hasn’t shown up.

He sneaks a glance at his watch. Fifteen minutes late, now.

Sighing, Steve picks his pencil up and goes back to the series of drawings he's been doodling on the table for the past half-hour. There's already a little BMW and the logo of their basketball team there, alongside a grossly inaccurate rendition of Nancy's face. He's almost finished with his cartoon version of Darth when the door suddenly bangs open behind him. Steve startles at the sound and his hand slips, smudging the little demodog with the side of his palm. 

“Well, well, well,” says a voice from the doorway. “If it isn’t the King himself.”

Steve _knows_ this voice. He whips around in his chair and –

Oh, no. _No-no-no_.

There’s a chance, a very small chance, that Billy _just_ _happened_ to pass through the library, saw Steve sitting there and decided to come fuck with him some more. But there’s also a chance that he’s here because Mrs. Peterson sent him. And Steve, who’s had some pretty shitty luck in the past few days, can guess which one of the two is most likely to be true.

“Your face is a mess, Harrington. You should get that looked at,” Billy drawls. Like he _cares_, like he’s not the one who did this to him less than twelve hours ago. What a _dick_.

“Relax, Harrington. I’m not looking for a fight,” Billy goes on, sitting himself in front of Steve, straddling his chair, his forearms coming to rest along the back of it. He plucks a cigarette from the pack he keeps in his shirt’s front pocket, placing it between his lips. “You threw the first punch, I hit back. Fair’s fair. We’re done now.”

And, yeah, _no_. Steve may have _punched_ Billy, but he’s pretty sure Billy would have _killed_ him if Max hadn’t leapt in with that syringe. But Steve doesn’t say that. What he says instead is “You can’t smoke in here.” He regrets it as soon as the words are out of this mouth, knows it makes him sound like such a stick-in-the-mud, which he is _not_.

“You plan on ratting me out?” Billy snorts, as he flips his Zippo open, cupping one hand around it before bringing it toward his mouth to light up the cigarette.

This time Steve keeps his mouth shut.

“Well then,” Billy says, tapping cigarette ash on the floor, “let’s get serious, shall we? A little birdie told me you were in dire need of some help.”

Billy takes a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and slaps it on the table, sliding it over to Steve with his index finger. “Let’s see where you stand.” He’s smiling, clearly enjoying this, the smug fuck.

Steve picks up the paper, unfolds it and scans its content. It’s a worksheet and – it’s not so bad actually. Yeah, it’s true, some of these problems are way out of his league (he even wonders briefly if Billy threw some AP shit in there just to be an asshole) but there is stuff here that he _does_ know how to solve. Sort of. People always look at him and think he’s an idiot but they tend to forget that he actually made it to Senior Year, passed all of his classes and everything – yeah, he barely passed but _still_.

He skips straight to the third question, because it looks like it’s one of the easiest, and starts working on it. He’s barely even done with his second line of reasoning when he hears Billy hiss loudly. When Steve looks up, Billy is shaking his head and his whole face appears to be saying _are you sure you want to be doing that?_ Steve blinks once, twice, then turn the pencil around in his hand, erases the whole thing, starts again.

Each time he thinks he’s getting something right he hears Billy make some kind of noise—a sigh, a wince, even a laugh at one point. And Steve can’t concentrate, second-guessing every one of his answers.

He’s not even halfway through when Billy snatches the sheet up from under him. “Time’s up.”

Billy skims his answers, whistles. “Damn, Harrington, most of these are 8th grade level shit,” he marvels. “You really _are_ dumb as a bag of rocks, aren’t you? It’s not just a front.”

He leans back, balancing his chair on two legs to reach across the aisle and steal a red marker forgotten on the table behind theirs. He uncaps it with a flourish and starts making corrections. When Billy slides the sheet back to him five minutes later, it’s completely covered in red. “There you go, A ‘D’,” he grins, mean and sharp, pointing to where he’s written it in big bold letters at the top. “For ‘Dumb’.”

Steve’s cheeks flush but he keeps his mouth shut. He knows Billy is just trying to goad a reaction out of him, has been trying to do that since they first met back in October. It’s cool, he can be the bigger person here.

But Billy just—just doesn’t _fucking shut up_. “God, that must be so embarrassing for you. Is that why your girlfriend dumped you, because you couldn’t keep up with her? And you’re hanging with a bunch of middle schoolers now. Closer to your own level, are they?”

_Oh, to hell with this. _All these dreams – of not working for his dad, getting out of Hawking and going to college, making something out of his life – they’re just not worth voluntarily subjecting himself to Billy Hargrove’s presence.

Steve shoves out of his chair, starts to gather his things. “This,” he says, waving a hand between them, “isn’t gonna work.”

“Oh, come on, Harrington. Don’t be such a bitch,” Billy says, frowning, smirk falling from his lips. He looks surprised, shocked even, like he wasn’t planning on Steve shutting him down so soon. Because that’s just the thing with Billy, Steve thinks, he’s used to pushing and pushing and _pushing_ until he gets people to push _back_. Well, Steve is not going to play this game again.

“Why do you always have to act like such a dick, man,” Steve says, shoving his backpack over his shoulder.

He’s out the door without once looking back.

***

The next morning, Steve finds a comprehensive set of notes going over basic algebra concepts wedged between the slits of his locker.

It feels like an apology.

They never talk about it.

Billy never formerly apologies for beating him up or for humiliating him in the library. Steve never says thank you for the notes.

On Friday, Billy simply shows up at Steve’s locker, asking him to meet up after school. And Steve – Steve says yes.

**Author's Note:**

> College is currently kicking my ass, but I'll try to update soon-ish!


End file.
